The Curse of the Apples

While going through stories that I had written in the past year, I came upon a little doodle poem which I wrote into the middle of a story. I wanted to call it the curse of the apples because it reminds me of how metaphors follow the way we think, when we least expect it.

At some point in the early autumn, I had made an apple tart for someone very close to me. However much I tried to deliver the tart to them however, they were too busy to take it. Another friend saw me and thought it was sad. But at the end of the day, things like apple tarts never matter.

On a lighthearted note, I sat through some episodes of “Once Upon a Time,” and have been greatly interested in how magic can be re-appropriated to suit personal agendas of any sort.

This poem was written in early April 2014 though, long before apples became bittersweet evocative gestures.

You saw to it with the apples,

You told me to read it in the books,

I realized it when the cat died,

his stilled and bruised body

bearing the marks of that rabied dog.

Did you know, the edges to which

The frissures spilled into

The gaps you left,

the holes I filled?

Ineptly, judiciously, knowledgeably,

And yet, by no means with love.

Nothing magnanimous, nothing, nothing, truly nothing

Omnipotence, the lack of which was present

Only in the swallowed grace.

Raven-like, ravenous, ruptured, but never ravishingly so,

all smiles,

Toothlessly cast,

like the wind on the empty street

Where we stood, under the umbrella,

Until the very rain we were avoiding whizzed

Past us and under us, playfully

whooshing through, gushing through,

Wrapping around our laughter, an orchestra

Kirsty Mitchell’s “While Nightingales Wept.” See the aritst’s extraordinary tribute to her mother by clicking on the collection of photos.